Please recommend a tool to draw structs / classes and pointers

Question

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Application to help build diagrams

I know the paper and a pen answer, but I truly need a PC solution.

I made the example below by Word, so please recommend others more suitable and convenient.

By suitable and convenient, I mean I can edit more easily - for example, in Word, if I add something, I have to scale and adjust the whole. In other words, I want something a little bit like SmartArt for focusing on programming illustrations.

Thanks.

Answer 1

My personal favorites:

• Altova UModel - Can be complex, but it's not necessary to use every function. (Commercial)

• Violet - Simple, but sufficient for most technical software diagrams using UML like elements. Can run via Java Webstart so no installation required. (Free)

(Edit: Modified Violet link to use official URL which redirects to newer site and version. Also noted Violet's support for webstart).

Answer 2

its a webapp.. but i tend to use ASCIIflow. dead simple and you can paste it anywhere

            +---------------------------+            +--------------------------+
            |Answer question            |            | ????                     |
            |---------------------------|            |--------------------------|
            | eat pizza                 |            | ????                     |
            |                           |+---------->|                          |
            |                           |            |                          |
            |                           |            |                          |
            |                           |            |                          |
            |                           |            |                          |
            |                           |            |                          |
            +---------------------------+            +---------+----------------+
                                                               |
                   +-------------------------+                 |
                   | PROFIT!                 |                 |
                   |-------------------------|                 |
                   |                         |                 |
                   |                         |-----------------+
                   |                         |
                   |                         |
                   |                         |
                   |                         |
                   +-------------------------+

Answer 3

A popular choice for this is Dia. Not only is it free and open-source, it's cross-platform, supports UML diagrams (click me for some examples), and has a variety of additional libraries and shapes that you can find for free. You can also export your drawings in a variety of formats - even lossless and vector.

You can get Dia here for Windows, or here for Linux

Answer 4

What you need is a UML tool. Some are incorporated into your IDEs .
Check this Wikipedia entry for a list of available tools.

Answer 5

You can try the yEd, which can also be started from a browser:

yEd is a powerful diagram editor that can be used to quickly and effectively generate high-quality drawings of diagrams.

Create your diagrams manually or import your external data for analysis and auto-magically arrange even large data sets by just pressing a button.

yEd is freely available and runs on all major platforms: Windows, Unix/Linux, and Mac OS.

Answer 6

You might also take a look at Visual Paradigm (Windows only). There is a free community edition available.

Answer 7

I use graphviz and dot to create diagrams. With this you can easily make diagrams from text to almost any output you like: PNG, PDF, and more (http://www.graphviz.org/doc/info/output.html).

To install: sudo apt-get install graphviz

Example hello.dot:

digraph G {
        fontname = "Bitstream Vera Sans"
        fontsize = 8

        node [
                fontname = "Bitstream Vera Sans"
                fontsize = 8
                shape = "record"
        ]

        edge [
                fontname = "Bitstream Vera Sans"
                fontsize = 8
        ]

        Animal [
                label = "{Animal|+ name : string\l+ age : int\l|+ die() : void\l}"
        ]

        Dog [
                label = "{Dog||+ bark() : void\l}"
        ]

        Cat [
                label = "{Cat||+ meow() : void\l}"
        ]

        edge [
                arrowhead = "empty"
        ]

        Dog -> Animal
        Cat -> Animal
}

$dot -T png -o Animal.png hello.dot

The result is as:

See also http://www.ffnn.nl/pages/articles/media/uml-diagrams-using-graphviz-dot.php and http://www.graphviz.org/